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Will an adulterer who has an atom's weight of faith in his heart enter Paradise, and what should be said to a wife who betrays her husband through adultery?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

It is a belief of the Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama'ah (Sunnis) that those who commit major sins are subject to Allah's will. If they are punished, they will not remain in Hell eternally, based on His (the Almighty's) saying: "Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills," and prophetic hadiths indicating that whoever has an atom's weight of faith in their heart will eventually be brought out of Hellfire.

Nevertheless, this does not imply belittling sins, as they may lead to a bad end and the loss of faith. The Prophet (peace be upon him) described the punishment of fornicators in a vision he saw, where they were naked men and women in a hole like an oven, with flames coming up to them from below. Fornication extracts faith from a person. Allah has ordained the punishment of stoning to death for the married fornicator, due to the vileness of fornication and the gravity of its sin.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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